Arizona Theatre Compay's Ghosts at The Herberger Theater Center (For a map to location, click this link)
Mark S.P. Turvin
(home office) (602) 912-0117
I can be reached for comment via e-mail at: mspt@goldfishpublishers.com
Reviewed 11/10/01
Less than an hour ago, I witnessed the culmination of yet another of the products of one of the longest and most fruitful collaborations in American theatre, Marshall W. Mason and Lanford Wilson's take on Henrik Ibsen's seminal 1881 play, Ghosts. While Mr. Wilson is listed in the credits for "translating" the work, what has taken place is not a literal translation of the language of the piece, but is better described in the Arizona Theatre Company's press releases of this work as a "re-imagination."
Says Director Mason, " It has languished in the past several decades from stuffy, awkward translations that discreetly tried to soften Ibsen's startling indictment of our social values. We have tried to make this production seem as fresh as a new play. In Lanford's frank and bold new translation, Ghosts has inspired us with its haunting insights into the values that shape human behavior." While I agree in principal with the sentiments spoken by Mason, what I experienced on the stage seems a misuse of the term "frank and bold," and has put me in the unusual and uncomfortable position of questioning re-visionary choices.
I am a champion of recreating classical work to be served as an easier entrée to modern audiences. While I cheer the movement of a Shakespearean work to a different time or setting, I can't support the updating of language in a way that undercuts the power of the script. While Mason has given us an impressive production through innovative design elements and vibrant performances, the words that Wilson has crafted are too jarringly modern, and the play too full of contemporary catchphrases. While the mere mentions of infidelity, congenitally transmitted sexual diseases, hypocrisy, and children out of wedlock that occur in this piece shocked Victorian viewers mores, they're the stuff of Jerry Springer in this age. Wilson attempts to infuse the power to shock in this piece by having his characters speak in a way that they would today. What happens instead slingshots the script from being cutting edge to another style completely, one that does a disservice to the father of Modern Drama.
Despite the fact that Ghosts is one of Ibsen's scripts that strictly follows the unities of time, place, and action, the Norwegian playwright was a detester of convention. His revolutionary attacks on the hypocrisy of religion, friendship, marriage, and parenting slammed the melodramatic traditions of his day. What Mason and Wilson have done has revised the piece into what feels like a daytime drama. The characters appear out of time in using modern intonations, the music and its placement in the script a bit cheesy. Having a character during one of the most dramatic moments of her onstage existence give a raspberry to her oppressor makes for silliness, not tension. By turning this script into a soap opera, this collaborative team has created a piece in the style that Ibsen fought against 120 years ago.
There are many things that Mason does right, but this production breaks my heart. David Potts' magnificent set utilizing scrims working in conjunction with Dennis Parichy's precise lighting to create ghostly scenes is a revelation. The cast, featuring the repeated teaming of Ruth Reid and Jason Kuykendall as mother and son from his production of Long Day's Journey into Night, is impressive. Reid in particular plays the strengths of her character to perfection, making her tragic fall that much more powerful. Kuykendall's restlessness is conveyed with blocking, but also with his eyes, which patrol the setting while he remains stationary. Kelly McAndrew is saucy as the plotting servant Regina. Daren Kelly's portrayal of the rigid Reverend Manders pushes along the soap opera feel of the piece, though, as he plays to the audience at times, and delivers some lines as though speaking to a congregation that knows of his plight. Bob Sorenson does an excellent job as conman Jacob Engstrand, though his accent, perhaps intended to imply a worldly seaman, seems mysteriously Celtic, not Nordic.
Laura Crow's carefully considered period costumes give the only hint of time in this piece. Having given little room to the manners against which Ibsen railed, the bluntness with which Mason directs the cast makes this piece feel too contemporary for its own good. I spoke with members of the audience who considered the contemporary phrasing and word choices "jarring" and "odd." One person commented that had he not "read before that the play was set in Norway," he would have mistaken it's setting for "Texas." This may make Wilson and Mason happy, since it means that they've opened up the play to a modern Phoenix audience, but I feel that something is lost for this. How far can you expand the base of the show before losing its power? There's a great difference between the power of the sun image that ends the original script and the raspberry that punctuates a two decade lie just before. In the hands of Mason and Wilson, both choices are sadly mishandled, and so goes the play.
Production Details:
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen,
Translated by Lanford Wilson
Arizona Theatre Company
The Herberger Theater Center, Phoenix (For a
map to location, click this
link)
(602) 256-6995
November 8th - 25th, 2001